This is a re-staging of our award winning project and is your only opportunity to create a General Assembly brooch in 2011. If you would like to participate please contact Blanche at blanche@blanchetilden.com.au to book your place.

Prices range from $60 – $350 and include all parts to assemble your brooch.

General Assembly brooch making workshop
Saturday 30 April
2pm – 3pm
Pin-up – Architecture & Design Project Space
15-25 Keele Street Collingwood

Phoebe Porter and Blanche Tilden (Studio Hacienda) have been invited to contribute to “The First Show” where twenty leading architecture, design and art studios reflect on their work – past and present – and encapsulate a “design moment” or “big idea” that continues to underpin their practice today.

The exhibition is the first in the new architecture and design project space called Pin-up located at the Compound Interest, Collingwood.

Pin-up – Architecture & Design Project Space
The Compound Interest – Centre for the Applied Arts
15 -25 Keele Street
Collingwood, Melbourne

pinupprojectspace.com

Image: Tobias Titz

Thanks to Ben for his great work!
Visit his website to see more of the many projects he has worked on www.benlandau.com

The Contemporary Wearables Exhibition is showing at Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery until 25 October 2009.

General Assembly is an ongoing collaborative jewellery project by Studio Hacienda (Blanche Tilden and Phoebe Porter) in which audience members are invited to participate by selecting from pre-fabricated parts to make their own souvenir brooch. The project has been staged in both Melbourne and Canberra and received widespread acclaim, culminating in a Premier’s Design Award in 2008.

For this special State of Design event,  we will be exhibiting the full Melbourne and Canberra series of components side by side for the first time. Each session will start with an overview of Studio Hacienda and the history of this exciting project, followed by a demonstration of the fabrication techniques used to create the work.
The session will end with a viewing of the finished product and the opportunity to purchase the parts to make your very own souvenir brooch.  Each brooch is numbered to show its place in the series and becomes a personal memento of your involvement in General Assembly.

Don’t miss the opportunity to be a part of this award winning project!

Session times:  
Friday 17 July 3pm, 4.30pm, 6pm
Saturday 18 July 12pm, 1.30pm, 3pm

Venue:
Boyd School Studios
207-229 City Road
Southbank

This is a free event but bookings are required. Email blanche@blanchetilden.com.au to book your preferred session time.

visit Design for Eveyone program…

Judges Comment:

” General Assembly highlighted important concerns within contemporary design practice with both practical and conceptul outcomes. The interrogation of the local, the importance of social networks, the interactive customisation and the adding of value through the application of a good idea are all elements that make this project intriguing and outstanding.”

view the full list of 2008 award recipients…

The third in this series of exhibitions, General Assembly – Open House 08 will coincide with the 2008 Ausglass Conference held at The Canberra Glassworks. The range of interchangeable components has been extended specifically for Open House 08 and brooches made during this event will be hallmarked with a special edition Glassworks stamp.

Each assembled brooch is a personal memento of Canberra, the Ausglass Conference – Open House and a souvenir of involvement in Studio Hacienda’s ongoing General Assembly project.

General Assembly (Canberra) – a review in parts

Studio Haçienda at Workshop Bilk, Queanbeyan, NSW, 19 September – 2 November, 2007

The idea

‘General Assembly (Canberra)’ is the second collaborative project that Studio Haçienda has presented this year. The reference is to industrial processes– the factory assembly line–not high school timetables. ‘General Assembly’ is not only a collaboration between Phoebe Porter and Blanche Tilden, who established their Melbourne workshop in 2005, it is also a collaboration between them and the audience It follows an initial ‘General Assembly’ which was part of the Craft Victoria exhibition Solutions for Better Living (8 March – 7 April 2007, curator Kate Rhodes; reviewed in Craft Culture by Robyn Ho).

I think of that version now as ‘General Assembly (Melbourne)’, a not inappropriate naming in retrospect, as their modus operandi could be applied to any city, I suspect, with equal success.

Together Porter and Tilden developed shapes and textures redolent of Canberra (as they had for Melbourne). They went back to Marion Mahoney Griffin’s beautiful watercolour drawings that were submitted for Walter Burley Griffin’s entry in the competition to design Australia’s new capital city. They adopted the ubiquitous roundabouts that drive people crazy when they first come to live here. They abstracted the structure of the carillon, the bell tower that stands sentinel over the lake. All strong memories of a city in which both artists had spent many years (both studied at the Canberra School of Art, ANU).

The intention was to compile a set of component parts that could be assembled into a brooch in a variety of ways: an engineering and design challenge in itself. Assembled not by them, but by audience members.

‘General Assembly’ was to test the choices of the buyer; make that process a conscious one. It is a new take on personalising the mass-produced. It tests the limits of the hand-made vs. the production line. Like their acknowledged inspiration (Ben Kelly, designer of the interior of the Manchester nightclub The Haçienda, and graphic designer Peter Saville, who redefined “industrial chic” through his work for Factory Records) ‘General Assembly’ would be a blend of the industrial and the individual.

The prototype

Porter and Tilden spoke about ‘General Assembly’ in the Art Forum series at the ANU School of Art a day before the Workshop Bilk opening. Hearing them outline the process was a revelation: even a jeweller beside me was awed by the patience, skill and detailed preparation that lies behind this project. Their meticulous management is only matched by a certain bravery to even embark on such a scheme.

The logistics were formidable: necessarily so in order to make the process clear to follow and the brooch easy to assemble.

Prototypes were made from a raft of initial computer drawings. The prototypes were all hand-cut and finished. It is at this stage that things such as scale can be adjusted; what looks right on a computer drawing might not sit well on a person’s lapel or chest. The choice of a brooch, perhaps the least gender-specific piece of jewellery they feel, must be able to be worn comfortably on a suit, jacket, dress, t-shirt, or scarf.

The component parts

Once the prototype had been tested, the component parts were electron wire cut in multiples for a finite edition, but each piece required hand-finishing and anodising. In the talk Tilden showed a chart she used to track what pieces had been finished: an exercise in time-management, the sheer quantity of parts and the myriad permutations possible underlined the extensive choice in the eventual selection. The audience immediately started to do the mathematics. Tilden added, to confirm our thoughts, that as yet no combination had been repeated.

The palette of colours and finishes (matt or polished) add an extra layer of complexity. One’s selection could be multi-coloured, multi-dimensional, monotone or even minimal. Single or multiple pressed glass components could be inserted. One piece I saw used only one component with a contrasting rivet.

Since Studio Haçienda was established, graphic designer Ty Bukewitsch has been an integral part of their identity. He designed a fold-out brochure (the step-by-step instructions) for the Craft Victoria session, and for Workshop Bilk. For ‘General Assembly (Canberra)’ he also designed signage based on Marion Mahoney Griffin’s plans: simple, graphic and effective, and all in the brand colours of Studio Haçienda: hazard yellow and black.

The choice

I think this is where the project is really interesting. As consumers we are so used to making our choice from finished objects. If I analyse the process I go though, and this is what Porter and Tilden wanted to promote, I often take a bit of a gamble with the actual design if I know I like the artist’s work. In other words, I trust the designer to take me to new places with their choices.

When the choice is given to me all sorts of other issues come into play. In ‘General Assembly’, the choices are made within a framework constructed by Studio Haçienda, but as we saw above there are many directions the final object can go.

I found myself thinking about symmetry or asymmetry, simplicity or complication, depth of colour, relationships of colour and finish. These are the building blocks of design: thoughtfulness about each decision, each choice.

There are a group of finished brooches at Workshop Bilk. When I saw them laid out on the counter, I was struck by how differently I considered them. The opening night was full of conversation, banter, hard thinking. Lot’s of “What do you think?” and “Oh, that’s a good idea.” Many of us went home with a brooch that retains the memory of that evening as part of its appeal.

These objects are different because we have entered into a game with Porter and Tilden. It is a generous game that allows us into their world.

The assembly

One selected with a step-by-step guide to the assembly of the component parts, using a neat black tray, like a designer cafeteria lunch. This part of the process could take quite awhile, and I noted some people going through the process only to start again from scratch.

When the final decision had been made, the tray was taken over to a workbench, where Porter and Tilden sat in readiness to assemble the brooch.

Amid the opening night crowd, their bench was an island of calm. They were not fazed by the scrutiny. Not distracted by the talk. Not tempted by the champagne. They were working. In the instance of Workshop Bilk, demand outpaced production. (At Craft Vic, there seemed to be an equilibrium, and each finished brooch was immediately displayed on the wall of the gallery for the duration of the exhibition). I returned to Workshop Bilk a week later to collect my brooch–not a hardship–and as I mentioned above, I had the opportunity to see the few examples, the ‘express lane’ versions that Porter and Tilden had made before the opening.

Each piece was stamped with the Studio Haçienda mark and given a unique number.

The archive

Each numbered piece is recorded, so Studio Haçienda has a record of who put together which pieces. To this end, they and the graphic designer, developed the form that doubles as an easy reckoner for the cost of the final piece, in much the same way as one shops at Ikea ( the different size plates are costed, as are the rivets and glass parts ( A+B+B+C= X).

The future

‘General Assembly – Open House 08’ will be a special series (the 3^rd ‘General Assembly’) for the Ausglass Conference, at the Smokestack Gallery, The Canberra Glassworks*. This makes sense, as each brooch to date has included a glass component (Blanche Tilden also studied in the CSA Glass Workshop with Klaus Moje, and has made the glass/metal combination a trademark of her work).

The addition to the Canberra edition of a new colour (yellow), and a new hallmark, should make this edition even more collectible.

Phoebe Porter and Blanche Tilden will be at a workbench to assemble the brooches 24 January – 3 February 2008.

So, where to next… the boulevards of Paris, New York’s grid, London’s overlapping hamlets, Beijing’s ring roads. The question to Studio Haçienda is: where do you want to go?

Merryn Gates

Services for Art

www.servicesforart.com.au

Following the success of our original series based on architectural details and signage found around Melbourne’s CBD, General Assembly – Canberra is inspired by the considered plan and built environment of our capital city.  The starting points for the designs are Marion Mahony Griffin’s beautiful drawings of Walter Burley Griffin’s vision for Canberra.  Collaboration between Griffin and Mahony resulted in their winning design for the new capital.

The spirit of collaboration continues in General Assembly – Canberra.  We have worked together to define visual elements that represent our shared experience of Canberra.  Guided by the philosophy of craftspeople such as Melbourne contemporary jeweller, Susan Cohn, and German master goldsmith, Freidrich Dau, we have produced interchangeable components of varying shape, colour and material that are laid out in a “production line”  ready for the audience to pick’n’mix.